Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for managing printing of documents, and in particular, it relates to a method of printing multiple documents in order to produce packages of printed materials.
Description of Related Art
In practice there are often situations when multiple separate original digital documents need to be printed and assembled in predetermined orders to produce a package or set of printed materials. The required print setting (including finishing settings) for the multiple original documents may be different, for example, in terms of paper type and size, single or double sided printing, finishing requirements such as folding and stapling, etc. If multiple sets (i.e. copy count) is required, then multiple copies of the original documents need to be printed and assembled into sets. For example, a manufacturer of a product may need to produce a set of documents, all of which are printed individually and then assembled in a package and put in a single plastic sleeve to be delivered with the product. In a traditional print environment, such a print job would involve multiple different source files (e.g. Portable Document Format or PDF files), each of which would need to be sent to a printer as a separate print job (or sub-job), printed, finished and then combined with the other sub-jobs and inserted into a plastic sleeve for inclusion in the product packaging. It is possible for the user to send multiple print jobs to a printer sequentially to produce the set of printed materials, but such a method can be burdensome when multiple sets are produced.